Zohran Mamdani just became the most powerful socialist mayor in America.
The man who filmed his campaign videos is now broadcasting from a Shanghai apartment.
And his closest friend in that city is now the target of a federal grand jury.
Mamdani Campaign Filmmaker Invokes October 7 and Calls for Revolution Against America
Eric Hovagim worked on three Zohran Mamdani primary campaign videos – filming and editing – and was photographed with the future New York City mayor as recently as June 2025.
He has since relocated to Shanghai.
From there, Hovagim produces content for far-left Twitch streamer Hasan Piker – who commands 3.1 million followers – and publishes his own videos defending the Chinese Communist Party to Western audiences.
"I would be very surprised if there is no violence going forward in the United States," Hovagim said on a recent podcast.
He did not speak as someone warning against that outcome.
Hovagim drew a direct line between American workers and the population that carried out October 7th – treating the Hamas massacre as a natural consequence of oppression, the kind he blames on the United States.
He told his listeners that American workers share the "exact same predicament" as those he described in the Global South, and called on them to build what he described as "an internationalist movement" against the capitalist foundations of the United States.
For Hovagim, October 7th is a blueprint.
Hovagim has over 150,000 followers across TikTok, YouTube, and X.
He called Elon Musk "a valid military target," posed for photographs beside portraits of Mao Zedong, and dismissed documented evidence of China's genocide against Uyghur Muslims as "CIA propaganda."
This is the man Zohran Mamdani trusted to tell his story on camera.
https://twitter.com/thestustustudio/status/2102893210657853720
Roy Singham Is Under DOJ Investigation and Hovagim Calls Him His Best Friend
Hovagim did not end up in Shanghai by accident.
In a separate stream, Hovagim told his audience about his personal relationship with Neville Roy Singham – a China-based Marxist billionaire whose network of U.S.-based nonprofits is now under federal grand jury investigation.
"I'm friends with Roy Singham," Hovagim said. "He's dope."
He laughed off questions about whether Singham has secret ties to the Chinese Communist Party, while acknowledging Singham "is friends with a lot of them."
Hovagim also boasted about his access to Singham's wife, Code Pink cofounder Jodie Evans, telling his audience he texted her when Treasury subpoenas arrived and that she advised him not to worry.
The federal government is not taking the same casual approach.
Fox News Digital documented that Singham moved $278 million from Shanghai into U.S.-based nonprofit organizations since 2017, with total financial flows tracking to $591 million across 223 transactions on five continents.
By June 2026, a Manhattan grand jury was issuing subpoenas as Jay Clayton's Southern District of New York prosecutors pushed the case forward.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith had been waiting for this moment.
"It's about time he is brought to justice, and he is held accountable for his ties to the CCP," Smith said.
The committee's own investigation documented Singham maintaining direct business ties to CCP-linked individuals, working alongside a foreign propaganda operation, and attending CCP forums on how to promote the party inside the United States.
Hovagim – now living in the same city as Singham – calls him a close personal friend and says "the whole squad" knows him.
The DSA Has Gone From Rent Control to CCP Propaganda
Mamdani trusted Hovagim enough to let him craft the images that defined the campaign.
An ex-DSA member warned on Fox News this summer that the group has been taken over by communists – people with what he described as "a thrill to violence that's profoundly troubling."
The description fits Hovagim precisely – said on his own channels, to his own audience, in his own words.
The DSA put a filmmaker in Shanghai who brags about his friendship with a man under federal investigation for spreading CCP propaganda across five continents, and goes on record predicting – and welcoming – political violence inside the United States.
Mamdani is the mayor of New York City.
The DOJ is already moving on the network around Hovagim's closest friends. The question is how deep the connections run – and who else gets a subpoena before this is over.
Sources:
- Amy Curtis, "Mamdani's Campaign Videographer Is a Radical Who Now Lives in Communist China," Townhall, August 4, 2026.
- Tanner Nau, "He Made Videos for Mamdani and Piker – and Loves the CCP," The Free Press, August 2, 2026.
- Asra Q. Nomani, "DOJ Launches Grand Jury Probe Into Marxist Mogul Neville Roy Singham's Funding of Leftist Groups," Fox News Digital, June 29, 2026.
- Chairman Jason Smith, "Trump Administration Investigation into Shanghai Singham Network Aligns with Committee Oversight of U.S. Nonprofit Sector," House Ways and Means Committee, June 30, 2026.
